Twister

A Sestina

Under gigantic cauliflower, ponies fret,
whinny, bolt for shadows, until someone rescues
them; roadside sawgrass flattens beside the white-peaked
houses, like fools’-caps, in the lowering weather.
A tableland squall: women pull wet wash from cords
and bright yellow school buses race for safe basements.

We are prepared: step down into sturdy basements
while a hard wind picks up, tearing over the frets
of railroad tracks and strumming telephone pole cords,
slick in a furious warm rain. No one rescues
cars, or bicycles abandoned when dark weather
ballooned on the horizon and red flashes peeked

from behind tall-trestled water towers, some peaked
with lightning rods that discharge in the basements.
But we’re safe and warm, feast on canned peaches whether
we like them or not; play cards, the radio; fret
about what was left up above—the thick, black cord
of a twister sighted two miles south, and Rescue

Crews surprised by the force of it. We can rescue
ourselves only—we listen, slowly calm our peaked
frenzy over damaged things, a tightening cord
of love and fear encircling us in a basement
sanctuary, our chapel: the altar a fret-
ted ladder slanting up towards dangerous weather.

And soon we can hear it above us, the weather,
roaring like a train, that contemplated rescue
of a forgotten pet, impossible. Noise frets
our nerves; the funnel must be tearing our prim, piqued
garden into shreds, leaving only the basement
and a dangerous tangle of snapped power cords—

a black, bellowing, thick-throated monster; the cords
in its neck stretching as it swallows farms (whether
it likes them or not), but ignores lakes and basements.
And who will find us? Will they know what to rescue
in the ravaged aftermath, a town stripped of peaked
churches and silos? As the tremoring light frets

the wall—silence.
Silence.

Shall we wait for the rescue siren’s clear-weather?
See our homes, made cords of wood, above the basements?
Peaked with dread, we climb up towards the light, fret-by-fret.

Wildflowers

For Stephen Sturk

They startle us yearly—lights from another world
or from a larval place deep within this one,

scrawny things, more tendril than stem,
except for the shock of crimson crown-tissue,
shot with gas-blue, salmon, yellow of emperors’ silk
or whores’ violet.

Wild color borne of wild water, cupping
the sweetly-sourish scent of plant.

Close-up, they concede eccentric architecture:
hoods and slippers, mandibles of striated maroon,
and are named, accordingly, “Owl's Foot” or “Paintbrush”—
a freakishness abhorred by the prim garden marigolds.

Far off, they powder a drab hillside with holiday confetti,
susurate in downdrafts, and grow leggy under a tree’s
creaking chandelier.
People are known to crush them

under a kingdom of picnic lunches, and dogs,
set to hunting, will sneeze their ranks to pieces;
all of which further shortens the life of this short-lived

species, like that of the mayfly, born blind
and mouthless, living only

to mark the season
and dust the air with weightless seed.